Avvo responds to lawsuit

Avvo Chief Executive Mark Britton had yet to digest the entire 25-page lawsuit filed today against his startup company, but he had read enough to dispute claims that his newly launched online lawyer rating system was misleading to consumers.

Britton said the suit was brought because one disgruntled Seattle attorney, plaintiff John Henry Browne, didn’t like his Avvo score. Browne — who says in the past two days he has been interviewed by reporters from The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and NPR — has an Avvo score of 5.2 or “average” partly due to a 2005 disciplinary action he received from the state bar over compensation issues.

“I think that because Mr. Browne did not like his rating they are filing this suit in an attempt to chill our rating system,” said Britton. “All I can say is that I believe the First Amendment is alive and well and certainly within that amendment and the defenses that go with it we are able to make an opinion, to make an assessment regarding how well a lawyer might represent someone.”

Britton said the company, backed with $13 million from Benchmark Capital and Ignition Partners, had not earmarked a certain portion of those funds for legal defense. But he planned to file a response in a timely manner under Washington law.

In addition to Avvo and Britton, the suit also lists 25 John Does as defendants. Those include law firms and venture capital firms, who could be added to the suit if it is proved they “aided and abetted” certain conduct. In a P-I story earlier this week, Berman said he did not plan to go after Avvo’s venture backers.

The suit claims that Avvo violates the Washington state Consumer Protection Act, which is ironic, since the startup claims that its ratings benefit consumers.

“We are just serving the consumer here, and we are trying to get consumers more information than they ever had before,” said Britton. “Before Avvo was launched, everybody was pretty much going to the yellow pages and search engines, which are not the most efficient places for people to find a lawyer. By providing that information and guidance, it just helps consumers get the legal help they need.”

As to the claim that Avvo holds attorneys hostage by forcing them to hand over credit card information to update their profiles, Britton said that is a security measure in order to guard against “hacker bots” claiming profiles.

“There is nothing nefarious that we do with the information. We simply take it in to make sure that the attorney is properly claiming his profile and there is not someone going around and claiming multiple profiles,” he said.

Still, Britton said the company is working on a new system to verify attorneys beyond credit card information.

The lawsuit also claims that Avvo uses a secretive method to come up with its rankings. Asked about adding more transparency to the Avvo ratings, Britton said that they would consider doing that but they are most concerned about people “gaming the system.” Disclosing the method by which it comes up with the rating could lead to people manipulating the score, he said. Britton added that Google does not disclose how it comes up with its page rankings.

Avvo continues to make changes to the Web site based on the feedback from lawyers and consumers, something Britton said Berman chose not to do.

“He chose rather just to file a complaint,” said Britton. “There is no other comment I have, other than we will respond to it.”